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Oregon Book Awards Finalist: Lear’s Follies

You can cast your vote for the 2013 Readers’ Choice Award online at oregonlive.com/books.  The winner will be announced at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony on April 8th at the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

2013 Oregon Book Awards Finalist
Lear’s Follies by C.S. Whitcomb

Category
Drama

Description
Lear’s Follies, inspired by Shakespeare’s King Lear, is set in a Virginia tobacco family in 1929.  hen Colonel King, a Civil War vet, divides his vast holdings between his children, it sets off a progression of loss that leads to homelessness for the once great man and his loyal manservant Jonesy, an ex-Vaudevillian.  The story climaxes with the great hurricane of 1929.  

An excerpt from Lear’s Follies
KING: She’s gone.  I know when someone is dead, and when they live.  In the war I’ve seen when the spirit passes out of the body and what was a man is nothing more than another mound of earth.  She’s dead as earth.  Her breath wouldn’t fog the smallest pocket of mirror.  If a feather stirs, she lives.  If she lives, it would erase all the sorrows I have ever felt.  Mary?  Stay a little.  You have a beautiful baby girl.

About the Author
C.S. Whitcomb’s plays may be familiar to Portland audiences.  Book of John was at Portland Center Stage’s JAW Festival.  Holidazed (co-written with Marc Acito) was produced twice by Artists Repertory Theatre.  The Wilde Boy and Seven Wonders of Chipping was produced at ART Fertile Ground.  For television, she has created roles for Ellen Burstyn, Jason Robards, Anjelica Huston, and many others.
  


Suggested Links

C.S. Whitcomb’s author notes about Lear’s Follies
Lear’s Follies Review in The Oregonian
C.S. Whitcomb’s Website

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